The development of Retrovirus and Herpes B virus Specific Pathogen Free (SPF) macaques has become a primary goal in domestic captive breeding programs. These SPF colonies are important for the conduct of AIDS and AIDS-related research and in protecting the health of personnel who care for animals or handle animals tissue. The goal of this project is to develop methods for monitoring genetic diversity, inbreeding and genetic subdivision in macaque SPF breeding colonies. Blood samples will be drawn from all SPF colony members not yet studied. Paternity of offspring born in these colonies will be confirmed or determined by paternity exclusion using nine electrophoretically defined protein polymorphisms and by DNA fingerprinting. Estimates of effective population size will be made using this reproductive data and, from these, expected rates of loss of genetic heterogeneity will be estimated for each colony. Estimates of gene diversity in each group based on these nine polymorphisms will be confirmed using 60 loci whose gene frequencies are identifiable by fragments amplified, by the polymerase chain reaction, using 10 random 10-mer oligonucleotides. PCR primers for highly polymorphic human microsatellite loci will be tested on a battery of SPF males to identify methods to assess paternity and monitor gene diversity more economically and more reliably. Using the above data, a genetic management plan will be designed for each breeding colony designed to maximize genetic diversity. A much larger number of these random 10-mer oligonucleotides will used to identify genes linked to other genes which influence responses to exposure to infection with retroviruses and Herpes B.